We’re excited to announce that many of these new features are being released today:

• Manage Content – administrators can now manage content in their team.  This is great for scenarios where you would like to clean up old projects, review timesheets and add new team members to projects.
• Customize Emails – you can now include your own branding in Manymoon email notifications. For example, include your company tagline or just a simple “Regards,” at the end of each email.
• Export Data – customers have asked for the ability to use Manymoon data in various applications like accounting and reporting packages.  Others have asked for the ability to backup their Manymoon data how they like.  You can now download your team’s data into an XML file for use in 3rd party applications or backup.

In conjunction with these new administrative features, we have updated our pricing and packaging. The pricing is for unlimited users, unlimited projects and unlimited project creators!

NOTE: the pricing for existing Manymoon Pro and Manymoon Team customers will remain unchanged.

• Manymoon Standard - our free version of Manymoon includes unlimited projects, tasks, Google Docs and more!
• Manymoon Silver – includes unlimited email-to-task creation, print-to-pdf of task lists and project features for your team and everyone you work with!
• Manymoon Gold – includes all the features of Manymoon Silver in addition to the ability to manage content, manage permissions and customization.
• Manymoon Platinum – includes all the features of Manymoon Gold in addition to the ability to export data.  This edition also includes 100 GB of online storage which can be used by everyone in your team!

We hope you find these capabilities useful and the price points attractive for the large number of features included in each.  You can read more in the Manymoon FAQ.  Let us know what you think!

Follow these 3 steps and start getting more done:

1.   Create a Project
What do you want to achieve?  Set up a new project based on this objective.  A project can be anything from developing a presentation to organizing your next PTA meeting.  And don’t worry about trying to plan and document the entire project up-front.  With Manymoon you can create the project in seconds and then add to it as things pop into your mind (e.g. people to invite, a document to add, tasks to complete).

Here are some ideas for projects:

• Manage weekly meetings by assigning action items and tracking them towards completion of the project.
• Plan events or vacations by creating tasks for all the specific event details and to-do’s, like “Send invitations” or “Purchase tickets”.  Save documents or links in one organized place, accessible from anywhere.
  
• Prepare for a presentation and assign tasks to people who need to provide you with information. Create one task for yourself to create the presentation and another for a co-worker to attend the dry-run.
• Track a sales opportunity by creating a task to setup the initial sales meeting, a task for the customer to provide their requirements and a task for you to provide a proposal. Learn more.

2.   Assign Tasks
Within your Project, think about all the things you, and others, need to do in order to accomplish the objective and assign tasks for each item.  Your project tasks are automatically shared with any other members in the project, but you can also create private tasks if you like.  You may also assign deadlines to tasks to help keep everyone on track. You’ll receive reminders when tasks are due.

Milestones are also available so you can organize your tasks into groups that make the most sense to you.  It’s as simple as dragging & dropping tasks into the appropriate group.  This is a great way to break up large, difficult projects into smaller, manageable groups.

3.  Work with Others and Get More Done!
In addition to assigning tasks, Manymoon makes it easy to share information, updates and calendars with your team.  Every project has a Project Bulletin, where you can see all recent activity for that project, keeping everyone on the same page. Share calendars, documents, links with ease and know that you all working on the latest version of drafts. Everyone can contribute to tasks by adding comments.  Or, you can send email notifications to the group to request specific feedback on projects or tasks. Inviting your contacts to Manymoon is easy and free.  Learn more.

We’d love to hear your ideas on getting started with projects in Manymoon.  Please share your ideas and comments here.

How do you use Manymoon?

Michael La Plante, Web Developer and Designer

I use Manymoon for both work and for personal tasks. I am a Web Developer and do contract work under the name Laplante Web Development. My clients range from small business owners to big corporations based in cities like NY and LA. Manymoon helps me efficiently keep track of all the tasks I have for each client while allowing me to grant access to certain clients for individual tasks. This has helped me and saved me a ton of time when explaining project costs to clients, as I am now able to break everything out in time increments in Manymoon.

How has Manymoon helped you overcome specific challenges?
Manymoon helps me manage my time and allows me to delegate tasks to other people. Manymoon also makes it easy for clients to view the progress of their project and allows them to edit or comment on anything as I am working on their medium.

Before Manymoon I was trying to break everything out in spreadsheets and it would quickly get out of control and be difficult to oversee, especially when managing more than 15+ clients simultaneously.  Most of my client projects consist of what I like to call the total package. I have an intro meeting where we sit down and determine their goals, and from there I go through the design stages, into development and some maintenance after launch of the website.  The biggest feature I enjoy right now is the complete integration with Google apps and Google docs. This makes it easy to share documents digitally and saves me paper costs.

What are some of the results or business improvements you’ve seen since using Manymoon?
Since using Manymoon I have noticed an increase in my productivity on certain projects. I am able to sit down in the morning and have all my tasks laid out for the day so I know exactly on what and for how long I should be working. I am saving myself 20 hrs a week, and the extra hours make for more time for clients or to refine old products which is very helpful.

Manymoon has also helped me to develop better communication with clients, who have often come back for repeat business or just for a general chat. I often invite clients to use Manymoon. The clients who decide to use Manymoon remark on how easy it was to collaborate together and appreciate how much transparency they had in the project development process.

Learn more about Michael’s independent web development and design business at www.michaellaplante.com.

What happened:
Beginning last Tuesday, we saw exceptional growth and an unprecedented number of simultaneous users accessing the site.  Our servers were unable to handle the increased demand, resulting in site slowness and unavailability.  The root cause of the issue was how we handled user requests from the Manymoon Gmail Gadget.

What we’ve done:
The first thing we did was optimize how Manymoon handles requests from the Manymoon Gmail Gadget.  We also made significant improvements over the past week to our infrastructure, by adding servers and upgrading our existing servers, allowing us to scale to handle the increased volume.  In addition, we are improving our monitoring capabilities to be much more granular, so now we receive earlier warnings about potential issues before they arise.  Finally, we we are adding resources to our support team, so that we are more responsive when these events occur, and will be able to better address your concerns as they arise.

We are truly sorry for the inconvenience.  We know you count on Manymoon to get things done and this outage affected your ability to do so.  Please contact us if you have any questions or if we can offer any additional information.

Thank you for your patience and flexibility as we grow.

The Manymoon Team

How do you use Manymoon?

John Horsley, Founder of y2cl Comics

I run a small comic creation studio and currently manage 11 creators around 12 projects and growing.   We use Manymoon from start to finish on our comics. Various people work on each comic, from a writer, to pencils, to colorist and everything in between. We use ManyMoon for notifications and task tracking, to understand what state the project is in.  When the writer completes a strip they then task it to the artist to draw. The artist can then finish the art, complete the task and then creates a task for the person doing the coloring. After that the project is tasked to me to put the branding in and complete the process by getting it in to the queue for posting.

ManyMoon helps us to set up and track tasks and to keep track all of our current creative projects.  Without Manymoon everyone and everything would get lost in the shuffle.

First thing I do in the morning is check my email and then load up ManyMoon to see where my projects are.   During the day, I’ll pop over to Manymoon on my breaks and lunch to check tasks and create new ones.  I mainly use Manymoon in short spurts since time is precious. That’s one of the great things about Manymoon, I can easily use it in short spurts and not need to spend hours upon hours on it.

How has Manymoon helped you overcome specific challenges?
Without Manymoon the re-launch or our offerings that we are doing this summer would be 10x more difficult to manage.  Using Manymoon has increased our productivity on all fronts given how easy it is to manage your tasks.

Manymoon has definitely also improved our team collaboration. It has given us a central place to track everything. Our whole team can now see what the rest of the team is doing with ease. The level and speed in which we are able to produce things has increased what seems to be astronomically. I don’t honestly know how we functioned before it.

What are some of the results or business improvements you’ve seen since using Manymoon? ManyMoon has increased our productivity 10 fold.   Prior to Manymoon everything was done through email. Now everyone seems to be getting more done in a shorter time.

For starters, I can now see when my people finish a task without having to email them to ask.  After initial set up of the projects and task the efficiency is amazing. My people love it as it’s an easy way to see the things they need to work on.  The flexibility in what type of projects you can create and work with make it a valuable tool for us.

Here’s what she did:

Created A Project in Manymoon: Created a Project, called “Summer 2010 Road Trip”, to organize and store all information related to the trip.  Invited her husband to join so that they could all access and contribute to the trip information.

Developed Milestones: Created Milestones for each destination of the trip, storing all the tasks, documents, and links for each destination in one place.

Assigned Tasks: Assigned tasks to each other—everything from booking hotels, renting a car, planning dinners and activities in each spot. Within each task adding helpful links, hotel confirmations, research and destination information, uploaded maps and images–making it easy to locate and access this information while on the road.

Shared Project Calendar: Developed a shared Project calendar to help determine timing and duration of each leg of the trip.  They also add events to the calendar as they were booked, and added additional events from regional community calendars to keep track of cool opportunities while on the road.

Archived Their Trip: Once home, they archived the Project so the trip information is saved and accessible from anywhere.  They also were able to share the Trip Template with their friends interested in planning similar trips.

Start planning your own trip, or use an event planning templates from the Templates Gallery. (Click “Show options” within the “Create Project” tab).  Log-in to your account to get started.

How do you use Manymoon?

Major Paul S. Cianciolo, CAP

We are using Manymoon to serve as an interactive public relations plan for Civil Air Patrol’s National Capital Wing.  CAP is a nonprofit organization operationally comprised of 52 wings — each state, Puerto Rico and the D.C. metro area.

Instead of an annual plan on paper done once a year, I now develop it in Manymoon so it’s immediately updated as tasks or goals are accomplished.  I can also share tasks with other volunteer officers to help accomplish an objective.  Being able to set milestones, which I consider my objectives, is a great help.  But just the simple tasks assigned to a project and person are helpful.  We are all volunteers and spreading the work out helps get the mission accomplished faster.

How has Manymoon helped you overcome specific challenges?

Prior to Manymoon, I was not using any program except for the Google Calendar tasks.  I did consider uploading DotProject to our server, but it seemed too complicated for most our other volunteer officers.

A written PR plan is required every year but always gets in the way of actually doing the job.  By adding my PR objectives as Manymoon milestones and assigning tasks to each, I can see the results as each is accomplished.  It prevents the “plan” from collecting dust on the shelf.

What are some of the results or business improvements you’ve seen since using Manymoon?

Using Manymoon helps the team stay focused on objectives.

Creating an annual public relations plan is a new requirement requested by our national headquarters.  The goal is to help plan out what to accomplish during the year by setting objectives and goals.  However, once this plan was done, it would sit on a shelf until the next year.  Now I can add, and modify as needed and see my progress throughout the year.   Manymoon was just made available to most of our staff officers and cadets.  We also hope this will also improve our local event and project planning.

Learn more about the Civil Air Patrol’s National Capital Wing.

If you haven’t already tried it, The Manymoon Gmail Gadget is available for all Google Apps users, and lets you perform Manymoon functions like assigning tasks and creating projects directly within Gmail!

Watch a quick demo.

Google Apps users–get the Gmail Gadget using these easy setup instructions.

Feel free to contact us directly with any questions.

We are excited to announce that Search is now available on Manymoon!

The Search box is located on all Manymoon pages, allowing you to search for any keyword across all your Manymoon Projects, Tasks, People, Documents, Links and Events to find exactly what you need.  Right now, you can search based on the name of these items.  In the coming months we’ll be adding more search capabilities, so stay tuned.

Go ahead! Add all your Documents, Links, Tasks, Projects, or Events to Manymoon, they will be accessible from anywhere, and are now Searchable!  Manymoon can be your Knowledge Base for any type of work.

Got feedback for us on Search, or any other Manymoon questions, please contact us!

Partnering with Google to launch the new Manymoon Gmail Gadget — make email more actionable by allowing users to perform Manymoon functions, like creating projects and tasks, from within Gmail.  See the demo.

The Manymoon Station in the Google Developers Sandbox

Meeting Manymoon users, demoing the app and answering questions in the Developers Sandbox — we got great feedback from existing and prospective users, and greater insights into how Manymoon helps teams get work done. Take a look at the video demo Netbooknews.com did at our station to get a feel for the Sandbox!

Presenting at Google I/O and Sharing our Tips — we were invited by Google to speak at a session called: Learn how to sell your cloud app on the Google Apps Marketplace and share some tips towards becoming a top installed application in the Google Apps Marketplace (we’ll post the video once it’s online).  You can also read our guest blog post for the Google Code Blog where we shared even more tips on succeeding in the Google Apps Marketplace.

We’ve learned a lot—and had a lot of fun—and are excited about continuing to integrate with Google. You will start to see some benefits in Manymoon based on what we learned at Google I/O! We hope you check out the new Manymoon Gmail Gadget, and as always, please send us your feedback about how we can make Manymoon better for you.

Thanks and have a great weekend!